Marooned Part1

The rats had been born and bred in laboratory conditions. They had learned to find their way through mazes and get their food by operating various cunningly designed boxes. The scientists who had devised the experiments were very pleased with themselves, the breeding had now reached a stage where the animals were displaying inbred intelligence.

Bob Larkin had been born and bred in Liverpool and drove a lorry for the research group who had been training the rats. He was on his way south to deliver a group of the most intelligent rats from the current batch to another facility. He was approaching one of the most dangerous roundabouts in the country just before reaching the motorway system, when the accident happened.

The roundabout had come into being long before, purely by chance. Once an ordinary cross roads, with a little square of turf and a four way signpost ten feet high, it followed the field boundaries and had no relevance to modern traffic requirements at all.

Just before the motorways were built there had been a considerable enlargement and attempts at landscaping, but they had long disappeared. A large roundabout 100 feet in diameter or thereabouts was now covered by scrubby little bushes and plants that had become wild.

There was also a fair sprinkling of rubbish that had been dumped before the traffic had become too dangerous and now the roundabout was circled day and night by high speed traffic, anxious to get to their destinations as quickly as posible.

Bob was listening to the current Liverpool match on his cab radio. The end of the match was fast approaching and so far the score was level. The roundabout came up rather quicker than he’d anticipated just as his team scored the winning goal. He punched the air and shouted “goal” as loudly as if he was at the match. The lorry swerved as it was entering the roundabout, Bob corrected the swerve instinctively but two of the cages fell from the back into the bushes on the central area of the roundabout. He’d heard no untoward noises as he drove along and continued his journey in blissful ignorance.

Old Jim Smith had been born and bred somewhere or other, but he was very old and nobody took any notice of him these days. He sat at his upstairs window overlooking the roundabout all day watching the world go by and criticising the manners and skills of the motorists driving past. He’d seen the laboratory’s flat bed lorry drive through the roundabout far too quickly.

“Serves him right,” he said to himself as the cages fell from the back, “with a bit of luck he’ll lose his job and that’ll be one more mad driver less on the road.”

Both cages had burst open as they landed and deposited their contents in the middle of the roundabout. Jim watched with interest, about twenty rats had gathered into a group. Jim couldn’t hear any noise because of the traffic, but they certainly seemed to be talking amongst themselves. After a lot of chat, several of them ran round the inside of the kerb as if looking for a way off the island. Then they went back to the main group and obviously reported their findings.

The next move absolutely amazed Jim. All the rats headed towards the middle of the island and disappeared into the undergrowth,. He assumed he’d never see them again, but within a minute or two, the vegetation in centre began to shiver as if a large animal was pushing through the plants. Then slowly the area was cleared down to the bare ground as if all the rats were working together.

Half an hour later nearly all the vegetation seemed to have come back, leaving the undergrowth apparently undisturbed, but Jim had watched the rats building crude boxes from twigs and covering them with leaves, rather as if they were making houses. It began raining a few moments before the last leaves covered the roofs of the boxes and most of the little animals rushed inside, leaving just a couple out in the rain to finish covering the last roof.

From that time onwards Jim studied the rats on the roundabout every spare moment he had during the day. At first there was nothing much to be seen. Then slowly the appearance of the roundabout began to change.

Rubbish began to be tidied up. An old pram that had been dumped there years before the motorway had been built, disappeared overnight. Well trodden paths could be discerned from his elevated position, each one ending just before they reached the kerb marking the island from the busy road. Very rarely he spotted a team of rats working together to pull some relatively large object back to the central village.

The most amazing thing he saw at this time was a team of rats moving a car battery. They had put cut branches underneath to act as rollers and were pulling together on strings attached to the battery.

Then one morning he saw a small heap of five or six individuals squashed in the middle of the road. There had obviously been an attempt by some of the rats to dash across the road to the open country side.

A week later he was lucky enough to see another attempt by the rats to get off the island. He couldn’t believe his eyes at first. A cage constructed from small branches was moving towards the edge of the roundabout furthest away from him.

This time he had his binoculars at the ready. He focussed on the cage trying to control his shaking hands. The enlarged image that met his eyes was fantastic. The cage was travelling on the old pram wheels, but it was the motive power that Jim found fascinating. Inside the cage there was a large wheel similar to those found in hamster cages. Four rats were slowly treading their way round and round, driving a belt made from string that had been connected to the wheels.

The vehicle paused for a moment waiting for a lull in the traffic, before dashing out into the road, the driving rats now running as quickly as they could in the hamster wheel. It managed to travel twenty feet or so before there was a screech of brakes and a small thud. It was too dangerous for any vehicle to stop and any evidence of the thing in the road being some sort of construct was almost immediately obliterated.

A strong wind a few days latter exposed a new path to Jim’s gaze. Earth was scattered either side of the end of the path nearest the road. A hole had been dug a foot back from the kerbside and even as he watched, there was a shower of dirt from the hole and a rat emerged backwards, earth flying out from his feet. Jim put two and two together immediately, This time the rats were trying to tunnel under the road.

The next day work on the tunnel had stopped but the rats were still in residence. Jim guessed it was too hard for them to dig through the road’s foundations.